Going Viral in Berlin

It's Saturday evening as I type from my apartment in
Neukölln, Berlin. I've been here since Tuesday evening, and already, without
even having visited the archives at Schwules Museum, the world's first LGBTQ
history museum, I've been overwhelmed by the intensity of the threads forming
in Viral Legacies. Writing about the
very subjects I'm simultaneously living and experiencing for the first time
probably add to this feeling. But there's something about queer sexuality being
everywhere and being so accessible in Berlin that I've also never encountered
before. So, where do I go from here?

I must continue to make my project visible and dynamic. How
do I do that? Keeping a running log of thoughts has provided opportunity for me
to collect snippets and ideas the moment they emerge, allowing me to return
later to flesh out those that stick. I have also advertised the project on my
Grindr, Scruff, Tinder, and GayRomeo profiles, and have received numerous
suggestions for other materials to look at. Gay apps might seem like an odd place
to advertise this project, but with everyone impacted by HIV/AIDS in some way,
these spaces are the most emotionally raw places to talk about sexuality. The
level of frankness I've experienced so far has been welcome, and has also
forced me to reflect on my own behaviors and experiences.

A lot of people ask if I'm conducting interviews but I'm
not. I find the use of interviews perfect for an academic text, but Viral Legacies, though critical about
history, sexuality and remembrance, is not a formally structured text. Instead
of interviews, I use these experiences from gay apps to build a project
structured on the idea of contact logic. This is to say, I explore ideas around
sexuality in sudden and casual contact, which brings me closer to both the
immediacy and intimacy of sexual acts themselves. As a result, we develop a
rapport through sex talk that cannot be so easily categorized. I want to embody
these desires while resisting the scientific methods that have medicalized gay
sex.

I've already been struck by the prevalence of bareback sex
requests in Berlin. Bareback sex happens everywhere, but among men in Berlin,
the requests to have bareback sex are direct and sex club culture has helped
facilitate an open fetishization of bareback sex. People have made raw sex something
erotic because of the risk involved in these situations. Even though I haven't
used condoms in the past, this kind of openness surrounding barebacking is
unfamiliar to me. As a result, I must also check myself and avoid making snap
judgments without trying to look deeper into how queer sexuality has developed
in Berlin.

Sounds like a lot, doesn't it? It is. But each day,
each request for sex, each conversation about sex I have with men on apps,
every poem I read or essay I peruse, I feel like I've stumbled into a field of
landmines that I want to blow up. Tonight a poet friend in Berlin has given me
a collected volume of poems by Tim Dlugos, and I've been particularly struck by
a poem titled "Radiant Child," dedicated to Keith Haring. When I find these
landmines in my research, I'll be reminded of the lines, "by the time she's old
enough / to crawl like the child / in the drawing, his hand /will wear a coat
of dust, / or long ago have been / reduced to ash." With every explosive
thought, emotion or desire, the smoke and ash of this past settles on my skin
for me to see. These are our viral legacies.